Pitching horseshoes has long been a popular outdoor game with the object being to land a pitched horsehose as closely as possible to a post driven into the ground within a target pit area. The optimum toss results in a ringer with the shoe encircling the post for the highest score. Fewer points are scored for a leaner and the smallest amount, or minimum score, being given when the shoe comes to rest within a horseshoe width from the post. The post and shoes are usually constructed of a heavy metallic material wherein an errant toss may create a substantial hazard to the participants as well as to any spectators in the immediate area. Even with a seemingly good or fairly accurate toss, the shoe might skip or flip through the air well beyond the pit area or land on its edge, causing the shoe to roll very rapidly along the ground uncontrollably in any direction, thus constituting an even great hazard to any person or to property in the immediate vicinity. For these reasons the game of horseshoes has not been readily adapted to being played indoors. Even when constructed of a more light-weight plastic material. Most of the same hazards still exist, especially to furniture and other more fragile items usually located indoors.
Other of the more successful indoor electronic games such as bowling and darts, lose something in the transition of converting the game from its original form primarily because they do not duplicate the game projectile sufficiently closely enough to the original for a player to transfer the skills of one to the other. In electronic bowling a metal puck is substituted for the ball, and in darts the projectile has a large magnetized blunt end which is difficult to ensure sticking to the target dart board.
The closest non-electronic indoor game similar to horseshoes which has gained any popularity is the common ring toss game which, however, is played almost exclusively by relatively young children. Because of its lack of sophistication and absence of any great challenge or the need to develop any substantial skills of the type necessary in pitching a more traditionally shaped horseshoe, such attempts at similar indoor games have not met with any great measure of success particularly by older children or adults. Therefore, it is recognized that it would be desirable to develop an indoor electronic horseshoe pitching game which closely simulates as much as possible the original outdoor game but without the aforedescribed safety hazards attendant to moving the original game indoors. Accordingly, the present invention is directed to overcoming the problems as set forth above.